Flying to Athens and intensive care,
the injured Cretan motor cyclist died
some time in the night over Melos.
Shrieking her grief, his mother ran in the aisle.
A stewardess tried to calm, restrain her.
The boy’s bare, pale feet were protruding
from an orange blanket. The makeshift cortège
bore us faster than he had ever dreamed.
In couch grass, on Chester’s Meadows, a hedgehog
was embarrassed by death the surpriser.
A trickle of blood betrayed it – and
indifference to strollers and to crows.
By David Selzer